A year ago almost to the day, I received in Alsatian on France Bleu Elsass the historian Gabriel Braeuner. During the confinements, he was interested in the old pandemics which affected Europe and more particularly the Rhine valley. It drew striking parallels with the one we are experiencing right now.
Gabriel Braeuner said to me then, we just heard it, it’s not yet a book, but it could become one. What was my surprise to see arriving on my desk “the plague has gone to the crows”, his book was published by Médiapop, is prefaced by Georges Bischoff, and bears the subtitle “Living with the pandemic in the time of humanists” . Yes, living with it speaks to us a little.
The great plague, that of 1349, does not interest Gabriel Braeuner too much, he places his subject two centuries later. at that time, the scourge rages again and again, regular and relentless. How do we experience these epidemics in Alsace and in the Upper Rhine, a rich and innovative region, where printers hold the upper hand, this bastion of Humanism and the Reformation and where the great Erasmus resides? How do these strong minds and their contemporaries react to the epidemic? Some, like this: You will observe some funny correspondences with the pandemic that we are experiencing today. Some traits common to the immutable character of human nature which simultaneously combines heroism and cowardice, courage and cowardice, solidarity and individualism, reason and credulity, maturity and infantilism, generosity and selfishness?
Friction between town and country, between the rich and the poor, the stoic religious faced with those who cheerfully took advantage of their last days on earth. Denial, pilgrimages, masses, scapegoats. Very human reactions to what was considered at the time as a divine punishment. Proof that everything was not better before, it could be exactly the same! The plague has gone to the crows by Gabriel Braeuner, it’s 10€ at your favorite bookstore.
The link of the book on the MediaPop site.